Executive Committee

Lisa Gueldenzoph Snyder, Ph.D., is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Business Education at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, NC. She also serves as the Graduate Coordinator for the Master of Arts in Teaching in Business Education program and teaches courses in business communication, computer applications, and e-commerce. She earned her B. S. in Business Education from Northern Michigan University, her M.Ed. in Business Education from Bowling Green State University, and her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Bowling Green State University. She has served ABC as the convention proceedings editor and the chair of the Employment Opportunities Committee. She received ABC's Meada Gibbs Outstanding Teaching Award in 2011 and has published in both the BPCQ and IJBC. Lisa is coauthor of Business Communication: Polishing Your Professional Presence (Pearson Prentice Hall).

Marcel Robles, Ph.D., is a Professor of Corporate Communication in the College of Business and Technology at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) in Richmond, Kentucky. She has been an active member of the Association for Business Communication since 2002. She regularly attends the national, southwest, and southeast conferences; and she attended the international Cape Town Regional Conference in South Africa in 2016 and intends on the Ireland Conference in 2017.

Robles served as President, Vice President/Program Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer for the Association for Business Communication-Southwestern United States (ABC-SWUS) for four years as an ABC-SWUS board member. She has also been the Program Chair for the Association for Business Communication-Southeast (ABC-SE) Region Conference and served on the ABC Board of Directors for three years before becoming Second Vice President. Additionally, she served on the ABC Teaching Committee for eight years and chaired the ABC Ad Hoc Finance Committee. Dr. Robles received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the ABC-SW US region in 2004 and was awarded the Spirit of ABC Award at the international conference in 2011.

Robles teaches managerial report writing, professional communication, introduction to business, and MBA business research and communication. Additionally, she conducts seminars in organizational communication for Kentucky State Law Enforcement Executives and for Middle Managers from companies such as Tokico, Hitachi, Sherwin-Williams, and NACCO Materials Handling Group.

Dr. Geert Jacobs is a Professor of English Business Communication in the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University, Belgium. He is also a visiting professor at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland.

Geert has been a long-standing member of ABC, promoting the internationalization of the association and working together with the Executive Committee to introduce differential membership fees in 2013. From 2008 to 2016, Geert served two terms as ABC’s Regional Vice-President for the Europe, Africa and Middle East region. From 2011 to 2015 he headed ABC’s C. R. Anderson Research Fund Committee, overseeing financial support by the C.R. Anderson Foundation to innovative research projects in the field of business communication. In the same period, he served as Associate Editor for theJournal of Business Communication(nowInternational Journal of Business Communication).

In 2015, Geert was awarded the Bernardine P. Branchaw Spirit of ABC Award. In addition, he won the award for Outstanding Article of the Year inBusiness Communication Quarterlyin 2005 (with Liesbeth Opdenacker and Luuk Van Waes) as well as the award for Distinguished Publication on Business Communication in 2016 (with Glen Alessi).

Geert’s main research interests are in organizational communication, media discourse, news production, institutional discourse and linguistic pragmatics. He is the co-founder and head of the international NewsTalk&Text research group, which brings together scholars from across the globe in the field of media discourse studies. He is currently teaching Business Communication and English for Specific Purposes in various Bachelor’s and post-graduate programmes at Ghent University.

James M. Dubinsky is an associate professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Virginia Tech, and the Chair of the newly formed Virginia Tech Veterans Caucus. From 1998 until 2007, he was the founding director of the Professional Writing Program in the Department of English. Under his leadership, the program grew to 11 courses with over 210 students. In 2008 he became the founding director of the Center for Student Engagement and Community Partnerships (CSECP). From 2008-2010, Jim served as chair of the board of directors for the YMCA at Virginia Tech and from 2008-2009 as president of the Association for Business Communication. He has received college-level awards for both teaching and outreach and the first university award for the scholarship of teaching and learning. Jim is the author/editor of Teaching Technical Communication: Critical Issues for the Classroom and has contributed articles to journals ranging from Technical Communication Quarterly to the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. His research focuses on the scholarship of teaching, combining historical, rhetorical, and qualitative methods to study the connections of experiential learning and reflective practice. Jim also served as the faculty advisor for the Sustainable Food Corps (five years) and for WUVT-FM (http://www.wuvt.vt.edu), the campus radio station, for 10 years. He hosted a radio show—the New River Sampler every Friday morning between 7 and 9 a.m. , for 12 years, featuring folk, folk-rock, bluegrass, and blues. He and his wife Robyn live in Roanoke, VA and have five children, ages 18-27.

Deborah Roebuck, Past-Presidentdroebuck@kennesaw.eduKennesaw State University

I have been an active member of Association for Business Communication since the late 1980s. At that time, I was working on my doctorate at Georgia State University, and Dr. Jean Voyles, a long standing member of ABC, was hosting the national ABC conference. She put me to work on that conference; and after that conference, I was “hooked” on ABC. I have rarely missed a national conference since my first conference in Atlanta. Throughout the years since receiving my PhD, I have enjoyed participating in the international and regional conferences. I was honored to chair the SE Regional Conference in 1993 and 2011. Currently I am the second VP, part of the Leadership team for SE Region, member of the MBA SIG group and the AACSB liaison group, and serve on Editorial Review Boards of the International Journal of Business Communication and Business and Professional Communication Quarterly. I have been a member of the Student Writing Committee; the Publication Board, where I served as the Chair for five years; and the MBA SIG group, where I also served as Chair for five years.

ABC has been a part of my life for almost 30 years, and I believe that demonstrates my loyalty and passion for this organization. I want others to understand our interdisciplinary field, to realize that our high quality journals are excellent outlets for their publications, and to help grow our organization internationally. I welcome the opportunity to listen to your concerns, to represent you and our organization with enthusiasm and pride, and to work 110% as your Second Vice-President. I am humbled and honored to serve you in this leadership capacity and believe that together we can make this great organization even greater.

At Kennesaw State University (KSU), I am a Professor of Management; I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Organizational Communication, Ethics for Managerial Decision Making, Managerial Coaching, Women’s Leadership Lab, Reinventing Business Leadership, Organizational Behavior, and Managing Organizations. Before returning full time to teaching, I served as Executive Director of the Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics, and Character, Chair of the Department of Leadership and Professional Development, and Director of Programming for the Executive MBA Programs.

My first article was published in “The Bulletin,” which became Business Communication Quarterly. Since that first article, I have published approximately 40 articles in scholarly journals and proceedings, authored four editions of my Prentice Hall text book, Improving Business Communication Skills, and published the first edition of Communication Strategies for Today’s Managerial Leaders with Business Expert Press. My presentations on business and organizational communication, ethical leadership, and coaching have carried me to regional, national and international conferences. I have taught in EMBA programs in Romania, Finland, and Singapore. With former KSU President Dr. Betty L. Siegel, I helped convene the first and second Oxford Conclave at Oxford University in England, which was designed to bring together university presidents, faculty and students to explore the changing role of higher education in global ethical issues. In March of 2008, I was invited to be the international speaker for a Human Resources Conference held in Bucharest, Romania. In March of 2009, under the Auspices of the First Lady of Egypt, H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, I was one of six international speakers at the First International Conference on Women, Leadership and Social Justice.

I am privileged to have been honored in the following ways:

2014 Best Paper for World Review of Business Research, International Business Research Conference (January 13, 2014)

Clarice Brantley Service Award for the Southeast Region, Association for Business Communication (March 9, 2013)

Distinguished Member Award, Association for Business Communication (October 26, 2012)

Outstanding Article of the Year 2011 Business Communication Quarterly, Association for Business Communication (October 21, 2011)

2010 Best Paper Award at International Conference on Learning and Administration in Higher Education

2007 Distinguished Alumni for Hannibal LaGrange College Award

2007 Writer of the Year Award by the National League of American Pen Women

Research and Service Award from the A.L. Burruss Institute of Public Service